


as the marigold at the sun's eye

by haloud



Series: candlelit rendezvous [2]
Category: Roswell New Mexico (TV 2019)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Victorian, Found Family, Hurt/Comfort, Jesse Manes Being an Asshole, M/M, Rating May Change, Verbal Abuse, descriptions of violence
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-08-09
Updated: 2019-10-21
Packaged: 2020-08-13 12:37:32
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 15,711
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20174395
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/haloud/pseuds/haloud
Summary: Would Alex Manes let himself be touched by dirty hands, and is Michael man enough to even find out?





	1. the devil's plaything

**Author's Note:**

> a multi-chaptered sequel/return to my previous "a treatise upon dueling and its merits in the field of sport OR a candlelit rendezvous." you might want to read that one first!
> 
> title comes from shakespeare''s 25th sonnet ;)
> 
> this fic is not for redistribution without express permission.

Exhaustion dogs at Michael’s heels with every step he takes toward home, for all the lightness in his soul, in the very center of him, that could almost grant him wings. He is so tired, though he can hardly fathom how he’s going to _sleep, _when his life has changed so utterly in such a miniscule length of time that a star might drop out of the sky to his feet without him even bothering to notice. His muscles protest every mile in sore, ecstatic trembling—his feet from dancing, his thighs from an exercise far more singular, his chest from containing his trapped and fluttering heart. Every dripping-sweet, dramatic thought from his fevered, overtaxed mind has him whistling into the foggy night.

Like Alex Manes wrung out of him his voice, his pleasure, his promises, Michael will wring out every bit of joy he can from this one inexpressible night, this bauble of a memory still in the making. For all he has been a burden, an urchin, a discarded thing, he has never walked away from the Evans household with stolen goods until now, now that he has stolen the greatest of treasures from those wood-paneled walls.

He arrives home in one piece, whatever spell Alex Manes must have cast on him spiriting him past every ne’er-do-well lurking in every alleyway and cut-through. Sanders’s ancient old watchdog perks up his ears and whuffs out a low, warning bark, until he recognizes the second of his masters and rolls over to show his belly instead.

Alighting the top of the narrow staircase to his apartment, Michael romances the sticking latch into opening and allowing him entry. Once inside, still whistling, Michael lights the lamp and shakes out the match, dropping it into an old bottle on his desk in the same motion as he drops into his chair.

The moment he sits, the world rushes in like air into a vacuum. A high, bright note arrives stillborn between his lips.

His clothes—his second-best suit, and Isobel will never forgive him for not turning out his finest—are uncomfortable and too necessary for him to lounge about in them. Bad enough the way he left them strewn about earlier due to his…urgency. Affording a replacement means either forgoing sleep for whatever odd jobs he can scrounge up in late hours or a return to old habits he’d rather not revisit, and clothes of this sort are a necessity if he wants to continue in his siblings’ society. He’s had his fun—_dangerous _fun—and, ah, he should undress, pour himself a nightcap, see himself to bed; he’s got delicate work in the morning, and it’s hard enough as it is to maintain a reputation as a wainwright with only a single steady hand.

However, to close his eyes and stop reliving Alex Manes’s hands on his thighs, the banked heat of his gaze, the marvelous pressure of his cock…it’s an impossible challenge. Michael clenches his muscles just to feel that delicious residual burn.

What in God’s name is he doing? A soldier, a captain, a _hero, _from a whole family of war heroes. A family so wealthy as to be untouchable, the nearest thing to royalty the shoulders of whom Michael is ever likely to rub. A shudder wracks up Michael’s spine as he remembers Jesse Manes’s fishlike gaze, cold and dead in a face twisted in fury. Michael rubs his face with his right hand, like rubbing smoke out of his eyes.

Alex Manes didn’t look like that. All night, Michael followed him around like a toy on a string, pulled ceaselessly on by those broad, straight shoulders, that hair that looked thick and plush like velvet under the glowing light of Isobel’s grand hall, the perfect bow of his lips on every smile he had for every dance partner—and every scowl he had when he looked up and met Michael’s eye.

Everyone knew about Manes’s injury, for all that no one but his household—a damnably loyal bunch—and his physician has seen him since he returned from the front. But no one told Michael that he carries that injury like a quick draw carries his pistol. At his side, inert. He doesn’t wave about or carry on or tell grandiose tales; his palms don’t sweat around the grip as he turns the corners at night. He moves with it as an extension of himself, a marriage of flesh and steel, will and powder.

Michael wanted Manes from the moment he saw him give the footman the slip, but he didn’t make the choice to throw caution to the wind until Alex rapped his knuckles on his false leg and dared Michael to start running. With a great, gusty sigh, Michael digs his thumb into the last knuckle of his left hand, gritting his teeth at the grinding wrongness and sharp pain of bone on bone. Massaging the spot never gives any relief, but in idle, lonely moments, he reaches for the pain like another man reaches for the pipe.

Every man to his vices, and all that.

Leaving was too hard. He could have spent days in that narrow bed in the servant’s room Isobel keeps for him so he can stay without question or scandal; he wishes they had that time to learn one another. How might the captain spend his days now that the war has returned him? What books does he read, what philosophers? His quicksilver tongue is one of the most delicious things about him, and though Michael knows little else, he already knows that Manes is—Michael grins to himself—a fellow scholar of subversive Latin.

Manes. Not a name he relishes remaining on his mind. When they were together…when Michael looked upon him, all other thoughts fled. He was only Alex, only a clever, handsome man who wanted Michael the same way Michael wanted him. But back in Michael’s own rickety carriage-house apartment, that instant connection is quivering and thin like a harp string, little more than gossamer against the light. Manes. Can he be trusted? If Michael meets him tomorrow night as promised, will there still be steady affection in those sure, dark eyes, or will he close himself away from the terrifying possibility of this thing so new between them? And what is the likelihood of Manes keeping that appointment at all? Surely a man like that, as distant as he’s grown to society since returning from the war, has no shortage of willing partners.

Again, Michael reminds himself of the early morning awaiting him, no matter how cold and unappealing his narrow bed may be without a warm body rumpling his sheets. Equally as inevitable is the fact that he won’t be getting any work on orders or accounts done tonight, which means he lit his lamp and wasted oil for nothing. Crossing over to his wardrobe, he shucks his suit as efficiently as he can, then returns to his desk to shut off the light.

He can ill afford to waste oil, but with the dark comes memories impossible to ignore, half memories that make his hand ache with old agony, half memories that have him rubbing his thighs between the sheets. His room is small, tempting enough to call it ‘cozy’ full as it is with trinkets and books squashed into every nook and cranny, for all that it’s drafty and cold. Shadows fill the tiny space, thrown by every stick of furniture that stands in the way of the moonlight streaming through the threadbare curtains. Eventually, he manages a restless sleep.

* * *

When the sun reaches its peak, Michael puts his tools aside and retreats beneath the awning of Sanders’s shop to rest a moment. The dog pads over to rest his heavy old head on Michael’s knee and, laughing, he pushes the beast away, the day being far too hot to contend with all on its own. He relents a second later, scratching the dog behind the ears with the two good fingers of his broken hand until it starts to drool on Michael’s clean work trousers.

Sanders’s shop does a decent business. The old man must have been a servant in a dozen or more houses to hear him tell it; certainly, he has the right ears to pull a higher caliber of patronage than one might expect for such a shabby part of town. It’s a humbling thought, considering the bastard trades on his reputation, that in his dotage he entrusts every ounce of that gold to a one-handed street rat like Michael. In moments like this, the world seems almost impossibly fortunate, so much so his mind wanders to the bag he keeps packed with essentials and stowed above the wardrobe. Just in case.

And how foolish must he be to court disaster by taking up with a man so far above his own station? A man he’s taken in by appearing before him like a handsome, idle rake rather than a tradesman?

Would Alex Manes let himself be touched by dirty hands, and is Michael man enough to even find out?

He idles too long in those thoughts, long after he should have finished his midday meal, long after the dog has grown bored of him and wandered off. Just as he’s corralling his scattered mind, a tiny voice pipes up from the street, “Oi! Mister! You Guerin?”

Michael slides off the porch and ambles towards the fence, where a girl no older than seven or eight stands balanced on the lowest beam. The sight is hardly an uncommon one; more street children than is likely wise know how to find Michael Guerin and know that he’s a fool with food to spare and he’s willing to pay out of pocket for a little work that little hands can handle. Michael huffs out a breath that ruffles the curls hanging into his eyes, counts pennies in his mind, and hopes the child is here for something he can more easily provide.

“Guerin is my name,” he says. “Why do you ask?”

“Captain sent me with a message for you.”

A ridiculous flutter beats wings inside Michael’s stomach, and he has to fight back a _giggle, _of all things. “Go on then,” he says in a voice a valiant approximation of normal, though the child squints at him like he might be mad.

“He ain’t give me a message, really. Just asked me to confirm you was you and where to find you an’ confirm you’d be here at six o’ th’ clock this evening.”

Michael shoves his hands into his pockets and rocks up onto his heels, bobbing his head in a nod. _Manes. _He must plan to keep that whispered promise after all. And six o’ clock—Michael has to catch his breath not once but twice at the thought of looking upon him, the hollow of his throat, the taper of his wrists, while daylight still hangs in the sky. It’s a bolder proposition than Michael could possibly have even dreamed to wish for, and he is giddy with gratefulness for a courage greater than, he imagines, it takes to go to war.

“Well? What do I tell ‘im?” The girl demands, butting into Michael’s rapidly coalescing fantasies.

“That you’ve found the right place and the right man, and I look forward to our appointment,” he replies.

“Alright, then.” The girl hops down from the fence, straightens her hat on her head, then sticks out a grubby hand, palm-up, for her tip.

A bit of silver peeks between the fingers of her other hand, clenched into a tight fist. The sunlight glints off the metal, and Michael wipes his hands on his knees and crouches in the dust of the yard, bringing himself eye-level with the girl. “What’s that you have, ma petite bête?”

“Payed for the message, ain’t he? I ain’t work for free, I ain’t. So _you _better pay up too, else I go find some friends.”

Michael laughs at that. Her chin is tilted so proudly he could be looking in a mirror at himself two decades past, dirt-smudged and all, filthy curls stuffed under a man’s cap that slides down to her eyebrows and swallows her ears. The memory rings so true a gong in his gut that for a moment he’s hollow and young again, hungry and alone in the dark. Is it possible Manes knows that hunger too, to have paid an urchin on the street so handsomely? Perhaps he’s merely _shamefully _careless with his money.

Or perhaps the man is simply kind.

Michael balks at every possibility, each more dangerous than the last.

“Well,” he says, dipping into his own purse, “I can’t offer you a fancy’s silver, but I _can _offer you a fair trade what won’t make nobody think you stole that bit of flash, plus a little extra for your trouble.” He jingles the pennies at her, rolling one of them over his knuckles to make it catch the light.

Her shrewd eyes track the coin; Michael hardly expects a child living rough to be taken in by a magic trick, but he remembers too keenly what might happen if she tries to spend a silver dollar not to try. Finally, she bites her lip and makes her decision, sticking out her palm for the coins. As soon as he crosses her palm with copper, she’s off like a shot, disappearing into a crack between two buildings faster than Michael can blink, taking double the pay along with her. He curses up a storm and throws his own hat into the dirt, but what can he do, with hungry memories so close beneath his skin? He lets her go, and turns his every thought to what awaits him later instead.

* * *

After that encounter, the day goes by in a wild frenzy, and if he weren’t so distracted, he might praise himself for ensuring the last of the detail work on Mr. Long’s fancy new brougham got done early in the morning. As the distant church bell starts to chime the hour, Michael paces the narrow square of floor space in front of the door, his hand flying to the latch at every tiny creak of wood. Finally he hears it—the solid rap of a cane hitting the bottom stair—and he counts each stair in his mind, squeezing and wringing out of himself the very last dregs of patience he possesses until he flings open the door the second Manes reaches the landing.

Manes stands stock-straight in the doorway, and Michael exhales heavily, swept into a rapture entirely new by this new angle of the man, away from the haze of pipe smoke and candlelight, human and solid in the weakening early-dusk light. It’s _him. _In plain clothes—though clearly well-made, and Michael feels a flush of insecurity in his thin, over-worn shirtsleeves—he bears little resemblance to the fey creature Michael orbited like some especially piteous celestial, but Michael’s heart stutters all the same at his imperfection, the thin scar permanently creasing his brow, the hint of sweat darkening his temples, the severe tightening of the corners of his mouth, the whiteness of his knuckles where he grips the head of his cane.

This behavior, the reckless allowance of a man or anyone else into his home, his place of work, and his feverish imagination, despite a proclivity for what Max might call _philandering _and what Miss DeLuca might call _debauchery, _is not in Michael’s habit. He should have sent the girl back with a message of his own; he should have suggested some safer rendez-vous, some place less at the bleeding heart of him. Manes takes up entirely too much space in his doorway; he thins the very air and seizes the meat of Michael’s lungs.

“May I come in?” Manes intones, raising a single eyebrow.

Michael ducks his head quick and sheepish, then straightens back up, unable to keep his eyes off of every part of Manes’s face, the _après minuit _firmament of his dark, dark eyes.

Invite him in. You must invite him in. He cannot leave Manes lingering on his doorstep for the twofold reasons of hospitality and discretion, but his tongue sticks to the roof of his mouth; his hands feel clumsy and inadequate to affect so much as a charming bow. It is so much more difficult, desperately, impossibly so, to summon any sort of wit, seduction, or repartee in a room above a carriage-house, barely large enough for two grown men to move.

Michael long since accepted that his greatest worth is as a handsome stranger; a second meeting, tantamount to confession of his own inherent worthlessness.

“Of course,” he says, barely managing not to stutter. He steps aside, allowing Manes to sweep inside, the door falling shut behind him with a final-sounding smack.

Then it is the two of them, nearly chest-to-chest. Michael licks his lips with a dry tongue; his mouth parts, just so slightly, just to help him _breathe. _

He cannot function, cannot marshal the will to move his limbs. He needs something more from Manes—from _Alex, _who in the living flesh defies every pathetic pretense of separation Michael has spent the day weaving between his head and heart. A word, a smile, a sign, a life preserver to a drowning man.

He gets—one thing, and he seizes it as a gift and holds on for his very life. Alex reaches out for him, dropping his cane unceremoniously beside the door—it clatters to the floor, and Michael is distracted by a moment of concern, until Alex seizes him by the hips, turns him, and pushes up against him, pressing him against the doorframe.

“_Alex,” _he gasps, arching back into the hard body behind him. He’d be staggering drunk if he could move at all, drinking in body heat and the heady scent of Alex possessing every inch of him, every inch of his home. He is still drinking, still sating himself in great big gulps, when Alex speaks again and douses him in cold water.

“Let’s not talk,” he pleads into the nape of Michael’s neck. His hands still _feel_ the same, big and broad and—safe—palming Michael’s hips, one hand sliding up hot as a brand to rub restless, hesitant little circles all over Michael’s flat stomach, making Michael’s skin erupt into gooseflesh, making him stutter out a too-loud moan. It makes everything worse. It renders Michael incapable, insensate, helpless to do anything but what he asks. He doesn’t speak, not any of the words crowding his chest, clamoring on his tongue. He screws his eyes shut and tries to recapture the simple joy in a body moving with his. Alex is even gentle, firm but gentle, when he holds Michael in place to keep him from turning around and pressing them together, face to chest to groin.

One might be forgiven for thinking that this position could be mistaken for impersonal, but it is nothing of the sort. Michael has already watched Alex from above, watched his face in disbelief and adoration and rapture, the memory fresh and clear behind his eyelids, and as those same hands fumble at the laces of his trousers he clings like a lost child to that memory, coddles himself by pressing his own rough fingers to his panting lips and pretending they belong to Alex instead.

However, the power of memory is only so effective when Michael is so nervous, so decentered, so unsure in the face of Alex’s strange behavior. So when Alex finally slides his hand behind Michael’s laces, he finds him soft.

Alex jerks back as if scalded, tearing his hand from Michael’s trousers and stumbling back a half-step. With the space he puts between them, Michael is finally able to turn look upon him. He gets a perfect view of the shutters closing on that face, the face that has so utterly consumed Michael, bewitched him so entirely in such a breathless space of time it gave him a weak-kneed new respect for poetry. That high, expressive brow smooths flat; his muse’s lips settle into a blank, inscrutable line. His jaw fixes to a swordspoint, every inch the military man, the consummate captain, the hero.

However, beneath all the gilt and heraldry conjured by his very bearing, Michael’s eyes can still discern _Alex, _sharp-tongued and giddy, messy-haired and daring, and he feels a pang of camaraderie, of a deep and resonant empathy. Did he not spend a night and day thinking _Manes, Manes, _haunting his very self with half-formed doubts based on the basest of fears—that blood may out? At the same time fearing that the worst outcome of all would be that Alex would stand him pat and fail to honor such unbreakable covenants as breathless promises made covered in sweat and spend?

They can try again—the evening is young. It is alright if in the light Alex can’t stand to come face to face with a fellow cock-stand; Michael has a surfeit of willing flesh to offer. It is alright, so long as Alex comes _back. _Every inch of cold air is a tragedy between them, an awful perversion of the natural order, when Michael knows with a growing certainty that he was born to be as the saber at his hip, the orders on his tongue, his—his gray-haired Hephaestion. Every second they spend in one another’s company, he grows more certain. The very existence of Alexander Manes makes all the world anew, less the cruelty, and makes it possible. In less than a heartbeat, under the slowly setting sun, Michael _understands. _He reaches out to pull them back together—he’ll turn his back, he’ll hide his face, anything at all until Alex understands it too, this supplicant sureness, this ambrosial truth.

Michael’s hand finds the bend of Alex’s arm, the same muscle and bone and lifeblood he touched only the night before, ere he led him away from the party and had his wicked way with him. However, this time, Alex doesn’t budge. He doesn’t let himself be led, tripping and joyful, into the safe darkness Michael provides, and the firmer Alex stands the more Michael feels the natural, helpless smile he hadn’t even realized was transforming his face slips away into a nervous frown.

“Alex?” He chances, but Alex isn’t looking him in the eye.

Gaze fixed on the wall over Michael’s shoulder, Alex says, “This was a mistake. What happened last night cannot happen again. I—” He pauses and has to clear his throat.

The hesitation allows one hopeful breath to batter its way into Michael’s frozen lungs before it blows back out again at Alex’s next words.

“Good bye, Mr. Guerin.”

He never even removed his hat. There is nothing for him to gather, no infinitesimal errand to soothe Michael’s racing mind with another moment of memory to cling to. He snatches up his cane in the same motion as he reopens the door.

One moment he is here, the next, gone. Michael collapses, numb, into his chair before Alex’s footsteps even reach the stairs.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> slides into all ur dms individually to whisper to u: *victorian au*
> 
> is the speckling of french extremely gratuitous! YES, but everything i do is precisely as indulgent and gratuitous as the victorians would have wanted!
> 
> this chapter's anecdote: its surprisingly difficult to find details about the wainwright profession :'V srry victorian michael but details of your craft may be somewhat thin on the ground


	2. silver and gold

Memory is not counted among a soldier’s friends.

Men die in the mud and foam of battle, their skulls split clean between their eyes, their hale young bodies chewed apart by musket fire. They die crushed beneath their own horses. They die in their minds before their bodies as fever destroys what parts of them escaped the immediate carnage. They come home to their empty parlors or the fragile smiles of their wives and children, and they die there too, at their own hands; on the banks of the river; at the bottom of a bottle.

Alex was weaned on stories of valor and manhood, and those memories are not any gentler than his memories of fire and bile and pain. Not at all.

Surely, his mind is full up on tragedy and regret; certainly, his soul already bears all the weight possible for it to bear. Natural law dictates that his is a vessel that can hold no more, and anything that falls upon him must as swiftly fall away and become oblivion, unless it be of great enough mass to displace one of those older, well-worn weights. Therefore, surely it is a natural law that in a matter of hours, once night falls and Alex is alone in his home with his hard-earned silence and his dogs for companionship, he will have entirely forgotten the face of Michael Guerin, who goggled at him as if he were the sun itself at his door—the face that made him feel welcomed, cradled, and adored—the face that crumpled as if he stood alone in the frothing churn of battle and saw and heard his death in long, elastic moments before the last blow fell.

No. Alex does not possess that power nor the potential for it inside of him. Perhaps he might have, if they met before the war, but that is a life he will never live, and to pretend otherwise was a flight of unfathomable fantasy.

Guerin will forget, too, and if he does not, if the memory lingers long and fierce enough to grieve him, then Alex need only envy him for the simplicity of his life before and pity him his facile destruction.

By the time he reaches the front gate of Sanders Carriage Co., Alex can walk with his shoulders straight, and he does not need to look over his shoulder, not to search for a shadow at a window, not to torture himself with so much as a flicker of the light and warmth that embraces Michael Guerin. He tugs his hat down further to shadow his face and keeps an even pace out into the street.

The setting sun casts long shadows from the narrow, staggering brick houses that line the way, latticing the stone beneath Alex’s feet, divvying each step into light and dark. On a quieter street, he might be inclined to listen, self-conscious, to the sound of his own feet, the tap of his heels, one quiet and polite, one loud and clumsy, and the accompanying click of his cane. In this quarter, however, the world remains loud and lively—no one tucked within their parlor; no one sequestered at the dining table awaiting service. Women shout to one another from their rickety front steps; children scream and wrestle and race up and down the corners; the sound and stink of horses drifts from over Alex’s shoulder, back towards the row of yards where the tradesmen make their living. Alex breathes in a deep lungful of air slightly fouled by the distant river and lets it settle in his chest. It is gone on the next exhale, and he wonders, discontent and maudlin, if it will be even easier to forget once he is breathing only the stale air of his own rooms.

The sun progresses toward the horizon at the same rate Alex progresses towards home, and as the sky grows darker he grows, wearily, more certain that he should have chosen discretion over pragmatism and taken greater precaution before carrying his effects into this quarter of the town. Any man or urchin can have his watch, a heavy, ugly thing given to him by his father some Christmases ago, but Alex grips more tightly the head of his cane, a cold squirming forming in his gut. It’s a handsome piece of polished black wood, commissioned for him especially as a gift from Kyle, when it became clear that Alex, in a fog of pain and hopelessness, would not do so himself. The thought of it being taken from him…

He hadn’t wanted to carry something plainer, because the obtaining of a second device seemed almost confessional, almost a surrender to the forming of a habit, the succumbing to something more addictive than the laudanum. Seeing Guerin a second time was meant to be a closure, a tying-off of a silly post-coital loose end, a rapid shock to the system to banish any lingering hold the man might have had on him. To purchase himself a simpler walking-stick all for the purpose of more safely calling upon a lover would be nothing less than a betrayal of his own determination to settle himself in a mundane life.

All thoughts that seem petty and juvenile now, of course, with the very real threat of robbery lying in wait. Almost certainly he could still make it to his home without the cane, but perhaps not without doing himself further injury, or even inviting infection—and that presumes his hypothetical robber is either scrupulous or inobservant enough not to take his leg outright as well. Sweat dampens his shirt collar and sticks all along his spine, half fear, half the oppressive, humid evening.

He cannot increase his pace. To do so would be to betray his nerves to any soul watching. He cannot falter so much as a step, or else betray his infirmity to the same and look an easy target. Familiar streets, he knows, are mere blocks away, only a few scant minutes ahead—only the illusion of safety, perhaps, but at the very least Alex has people there, though the prospect of actually seeing those people brings little comfort. Parlor gossip condemns him for his avoidance of society, but in truth he is guilty for a much more heinous crime—his avoidance of the society of those who once relied upon him for companionship and welcomed him in turn.

He passes a stoop-backed lamplighter plodding through his nightly duty and can only hope that Maria will not turn him away at the door.

* * *

The Wild Pony does a raucous trade as workmen leave their posts for the evening and flock to the promise of a hot meal, gaggles of working girls swan in and out of its open doors, and skinny children chase each other to and fro, flitting in and out of the lamplight puddling on the cobblestones. It sits tucked away from the street proper, barricaded and cushioned on every side by more tall, skinny buildings, whose wooden beams and tottery clay bricks absorb the clamor of the night’s business, so one could nearly call it a mystical place—rough, lamplit, dangerous, and safe, cut off from the rest of the world. If it were ever silent on the porch of the Wild Pony, one could hear the river rushing amongst its banks, just behind one final row of houses.

It is never silent on the porch of the Wild Pony.

Indeed, it is that mystical sense of leaving the city behind for a different place, a liminal place entirely, that lifts the anxiety from Alex’s shoulders as he leaves the street and follows the alleyway towards the pub. Perhaps Mistress DeLuca tithes handsomely to her local coppers to keep these alleys safe to all who wish to call on the Pony; perhaps she pays them in equal measure to look the other way when fists fly within its walls.

Whatever the case, the Wild Pony holds another secret, alongside the various mysteries of its nature, as if it held Alex’s own heart within it—it is something of a haven, in its back rooms and hidden places, for men such as he. Alex does not know—though it was here that first he saw two men embrace, as he hid within a cupboard—if this giddy circumstance, this breathtaking allowance is a result merely of the longtime kindness of it proprietresses past and future, or if is a result of (and he feels particularly conceited at the thought) Alex’s own nature. Whatever the case, it is here, among all the strangers’ faces and familiar sights and sounds, more so than the cramped and cold rooms of his scarcely lived-in townhouse, that Alex feels at home. And for too long he has avoided it, afraid, perhaps, he would be too altered to still claim it so.

Indeed, it is not as easy as once it was. Alex freezes on the doorstep, unable to walk any further, as the sound and smell of the tiny, crowded pub transports him back, to a younger time. He was a child here, unminded, when his father or his father’s servants couldn’t be bothered, unminded but adored, though Mimi Deluca hadn’t been part of the Manes household in a decade. Though she owed them nothing; though the balance of the scales tipped, quite dramatically, to the opposite. A debt grown only deeper with every foggy evening Alex spent clinging to her skirts behind the bar.

And it is with a shame that is felt more deeply still that Alex leans himself against the doorframe and closes his eyes, breathes the air of pipe smoke, oven smoke, stale bodies, stale beer, and fresh-baking meat pies--the sort of hearty fare the Wild Pony is best known for. The rattle of voices and glasses clanked together swells over any noise he can still hear from the street.

The only thing missing is the madame’s voice herself, shouting over the din. Correspondence from his friends and companions dwindled to a standstill during Alex’s time abroad--a distance and a silence oh-so-carefully nurtured by his own insouciance. Still, he remembers receiving one final letter, a letter he read and re-read cross-legged in the muck, a tent-post digging into his back.

‘If this letter reaches you, Cpt. Manes, and if you have any care left in your heart for those whose care has, despite evidence and encouragement, never faltered, know that Mother speaks of you often, when she speaks with any lucidity at all…..”

That letter was in his pocket when he--during that final--prior to the injury necessitating his immediate removal from the front lines. Certainly, it would have been too soaked with blood to be legible, after, but it was not among his effects whatsoever when he was released from hospital care. Most likely it fell to the ground, to be crushed into the mud in turn. 

He had nearly forgotten. Or, perhaps, he could reach within for a spark of charity, and remind himself that one hurt, buried beneath a tide of hurts, can do nothing but raise the sea.

A man knocks past Alex’s shoulder, jarring him from his philosophizing and bringing with him the realization, with some chagrin, that he has been rather gawking and blocking the doorway for quite some time. Following the fellow who shoved him, he steps inside.

The place is crowded, wall to wall with bodies, with sloshing pints, with mismatched stools and chairs and tables, any of which a sudden stand could send into his path, send him stumbling. Momentarily, Alex forgets to breathe. And then, as his lungs engage once more, he lurches back on instinct, back towards the entrance and fresher air—but the crowd bears him forward, cuts and splits and reforms around him, until he finds himself panting in a tiny bubble of safety just along the far side of the bar. He allows himself a moment just to breathe, to move past the senseless panic gripping his faculties, and go weak-kneed with relief that, at the very least, he made it here. He rolls his hand over the smooth silver handle of his cane, just to feel its solid weight against his palm.

“An apparition,” a husky, trembling voice says beside him, and soldier that he is, Alex jumps to attention with his heart in his throat.

A heart that only beats more sickly when he turns toward the voice and lays eyes upon its owner.

Despite the letter and the time elapsed since its writing, he had not, he now realizes in a tide of grief and regret, fully taken to his heart the meaning of its contents, the implications. When he pictured the Wild Pony, when he came, tonight, fleeing to its safety, he pictured a ship helmed by the indestructible Mimi DeLuca, as he knew her as a boy. A mother who would embrace him. The thoughts, in fact, of the silly, selfish boy who she once embraced in truth, and who took her so for granted.

And when he pictured Maria DeLuca, her daughter, it was as a child the same age, his partner in mischief, all big brown eyes and curly hair, quick to laugh and quick to make him do the same. Though in his mind he knew that she would have long since grown into a woman, to see her now…

The war took many things. The lives of men, women, children. His leg, and nearly his mind in turn. But it is time he mourns for, his hand settled against his throat, as he watches Maria DeLuca hold court.

Casting her hand over top of the woman’s, Maria’s voice shifts low, husky and dramatic. Were she in her mother’s—_her—_parlor, Alex knows, that hand would be heavy with rings, and the air would be heavy with incense—and Maria’s audience would pay at much higher rates. He watched her mother do the same and even, a time or two, found himself pressed into service to squirrel himself beneath the fancy table and work the spinning paddles. Liars, Alex has no time nor sympathy to entertain, and thieves register beneath his notice. The occultist or the actress, however, is guilty of no crime more severe than showing those with more money than wits about them the version of the world they wish to see.

“I sense,” Maria continues, heavy with both sympathy and dread, “An apparition haunting you, its energies feeding upon your own, for it cannot sustain itself without you, and nor can it bear to leave your side, and--ah!” She breaks off with a gasp, a shudder, a hand pressed to her own bare throat, before she gulps and intones, “The spirit reaches out! Yet, it cannot speak to me, not when the connection between you and I shifts and wavers in the dullness of this place. I fear I must--if you wish to speak with your dear Edmund, it is my solemn duty to act as your conduit for that communion, but I fear I must ask you to meet me again...whence and wherefore the veil grows thin.”

The woman bursts immediately into sobbing, clutching Maria’s wrist so tightly it looks painful, her nails digging sharp white creases into that delicate brown skin. Eventually, she is pried away with a firm grip and a promise to conduct for her a séance at the earliest possible moment, just as soon as the moon reaches the necessary fullness.

“Your dear Edmund’s message awaits you in the firmament, my dear,” Maria says, her affect never dropping despite the slight twitching of her jaw as she extricates herself from the woman’s grip, “Now I must ask you to leave, lest you be influenced unduly by the solemn and nefarious energies of—” to Alex’s shock, her eyes, flinty, dart in his direction before returning to her client—“other apparitions to whom I must attend.”

Still sobbing, the woman nods and, gathering up her skirts, mops at her face and bustles towards the door. The crowd parts for her as if she is, herself, a spirit; they are used to such visions and consider them something of a unique form of entertainment. Maria does not watch her go; she whips a washrag from her apron and begins wiping at the first in a row of already-sparkling glasses before her.

“Well then, spirit? What say you?” She says, voice light and cold as a winter night, looking anywhere but at Alex, who swallows and steps forward.

“Maria,” he says, and any other words die in his throat. To this woman, who is like a sister to him, and whom he has hurt, what can he possibly say?

At just the sound of her name, her shoulders round as if waiting for a blow, and it is only that which allows him to battle through and speak again.

“Maria—Miss DeLuca—I know I have behaved abominably. I do not expect your forgiveness to come easily, and if—if you wish to banish me forthwith, I will accept this. However, I will—I do—consider you ever my closest companion. I was away too long, I know, but it was never my intention to…to hurt anyone…merely, I did not consider myself acceptable company for a very long time.”

“And that is why you are here? Because you missed my companionship and are ready to be among people again?”

The skepticism in her voice stings all the deeper for being earned, and Alex finds himself, despite it all, incapable of telling even that small, gentle lie. He says, “I have spoken only the truth, I swear it. However, to regain your trust, if such a thing is possible, I must continue to do so, and tell you that I sought out the Pony tonight because I was in the neighborhood and had need to seek refuge from pursuit. I was, perhaps, careless with my effects tonight, and, having grown unused to the realities of city life, feared being set upon.”

Abandoning the glasses, Maria next slaps her rag against the gleaming bar counter, attacking some invisible stain with ferocity unmatched. Her voice stays light as she says, “And when was the last time, if the room might be so kind as to enlighten me, that some innocent bystander was attacked on my mother’s doorstep? _My _doorstep? Because I find myself at a loss as to this perishingly pertinent tidbit of information.”

Mercifully, none of the patrons openly eavesdropping among them jump in with a response to her invitation. 

All the same, Alex winces. “Maria--I never meant--” The sentence dies in his throat, however, limp and ineffectual. Of course she would take offense to his insinuation--merely, he had been preoccupied with his fear that she would refuse to see him at all, and not prepared himself for this turn of events. 

“Of course you meant.” And there it is, the pain Alex had expected, the bright flash of Maria’s dark eye and the twist of her mouth in the swift instant she darts a look his way before refocusing on the counter before her. 

She continues, as Alex stands quite still, between a flinch and attention, “Here I was, thinking--fearing--that myself or my family had committed some terrible sin to drive you away from us, or that you were--shut up in your garret, all turned into a recluse, all terribly handsome and tortured, and I had just built up the nerve to become your rescuer, but no, it turns out we’ve only a reputation for ill character around these parts.”

“Maria!” He finally breaks free of paralysis and places his hand on the washrag to still her frantic, hurt movements. Her eyes at last, brimming with furious tears, snap up to his face. Softly, touching his old friend only by way of a fragment of old cloth, he says, “I came to the Pony because I knew it would be safe from all who wished me harm, and because I had been too long without you. For no more reason, and no less. This, I swear.”

A long moment passes, her eyes trained on his, a muscle in her jaw tense and fluttering, while Alex’s stomach twists and his nauseous heartbeat fills the silence.

Finally, the tension breaks, and Maria hiccups, “Oh, _Alex,” _and near to leaps across the bar to wrap her arms around his neck.

His hand flies up to steady her, and to return her embrace; he presses a relieved smile to the side of her hair, and breathes in her mother’s perfume—the scent, above all else, of home, of family.

And he does not, for even a moment, feel a twinge of guilt about the single lie, one of omission only, that settles beside his heart. The third and final reason he sought out the golden glow of the Wild Pony on a gray and restless night.

That the Wild Pony glowed so golden and familiar inside that, from the corner of his eye, he might imagine Michael Guerin drinking, laughing, and waiting just for him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> maria!!!! listen, the victorians were *obsessed* with the occult, and maria's fortune telling would be right at home. As would Alex's attitude about the Wild Pony, even if a place that idyllic is fiction! Whether or not there is magic in those stones after all, I leave to your interpretation ;)
> 
> tumblr @ cosmicsolipsism  
discord @ haloud


	3. for limbs with travel tired

That night, Alex did not go to bed with the green-eyed man who offered to pay for his drinks, nor the lithe and slender lad who touched his elbow softly and with intent. He opened his mouth and heard himself in echo—_“Let’s not talk”_—and closed it again, and simply shook his head to decline all such advances. Anything less felt perilously close to an infidelity, a ridiculous notion of loyalty to a man with generous hands whom Alex will likely never see again. Guerin out of mind where he belongs, Alex beds down with Maria instead, with the covers over their heads like they were children still and not men and women grown, talking long into the night.

The Wild Pony looks different in the morning, its chairs and tables all askew, its glasses and cookware scattered like so much debris at the foot of a great structure fallen to ruin. In the milky morning light, the dust just looks like dust, and not the golden evidence of some lovely fey creature; yet, somehow, through some sleight of hand, some deft and devilish exercise of the magic she purports to possess, Maria will have the place open and welcoming for all by the time the lamps are lit anew.

Alex awakes before Maria, and time was he would have gotten an early start on the necessary chores—straightened the chairs and washed the tables, if nothing else. However, he wakes to the burning ache that is his entirely modern punishment for the walking he did the day previous—so stiff it is challenge enough to descend the stairs to the bar, forcing him to alternate his weight in an awkward rhythm between his cane and the banister, sweat beading on his temples from exertion and pain. His leg makes it impossible altogether to bend or lift, and he is left furious with the knowledge that he will have to hire a carriage to make his way home and that likely he will be stuck there for several days to come, if not confined entirely to bed, all for a foolish errand of the heart that left him with nothing whatsoever to show, no peace within his soul, nothing but a formless anger and regret that the world were not a different place, that he were not a different man. Bracing himself against the bar, he lifts himself onto a stool, gritting his teeth against the bone-deep ache that is barely alleviated by the weight coming off his leg.

“Alex?” Maria calls from the landing above, and after he hails back, she descends half-dressed, in a man’s day jacket and a bright white petticoat swishing around her bare ankles.

“I didn’t mean to wake you.”

“Nonsense. As if I would let you sneak off into the morning mist without threatening to send the forces of Hell itself to your doorstep if you slighted me again, Mr. Manes.”

Alex cannot help but smile at that, and at the way she affectionately pinches his chin as she admonishes him. “You must know that doesn’t frighten me, Miss DeLuca,” he says warmly, removing her hand from his face so he can hold it within his own, and taking her other hand as well.

“Oh, I don’t mean to _frighten _you, my brave soldier. ‘Tis a promise, not a threat.” Then, kissing him lightly on the cheek, she withdraws from his embrace and sweeps the glasses off the nearest table. “But now I’ve seen you off, and I do assuredly know how to find you in the future, so you may take your leave of me if you must. I know you must be a busy man.”

“I’ll not be a stranger, not this time. I swear it,” Alex replies. “I truly am s—”

“Ah. No more apologies. It’s done. Now,” she smiles, “Get on before you waste any more of my morning.”

* * *

The jostling carriage is better by only the slimmest of margins than the pain of walking, but it has the priceless advantage of bearing him to his destination with far greater speed.

The house which Alex now occupies had once been a slim but stately townhouse, last in a row of identical houses. It belonged to an erstwhile friend of Alex’s father, though that association never once damned him in Alex’s eyes; for James Valenti was a man of honor. He saved Alex’s life once, and then, in death, did so again by deeding the house to him and freeing him from his father’s rule in his convalescence, a state of being which, had he remained subject to that man and his tempers, would almost certainly have borne him to his grave. Alex believes in the artistry of what the Mistresses DeLuca can do, if not the substance of it. However, he remembers hiding around corners when James and Mimi DeLuca would whisper, heads together, in the servants’ hall of the Manes household. He remembers feeling as if Mimi’s eyes saw his every move, dark and solemn and like—like something from another world, until she’d lift him up with a twinkle in her eye, as if he had imagined the entire thing. So perhaps Valenti did have some way to know of Alex’s need.

Or perhaps it was only the fleeting whim of a dying man. One of the possibilities is a little too much like believing in his father’s God, so it is with great alacrity Alex casts it aside.

Yes, prior to the madness which consumed him unto his death, James Valenti had been many things. He was kind, in a way Alex knew not men to be kind, and that kindness lent him a strength which Alex had believed was precluded by said kindness. He was an avid hunter, and his home in the Town bore evidence of his many trophies, which upon establishing residency Alex banished to storage, the midden, or, in the case of one particularly handsome fox in a monocle and bespoke suit, returned to the accomplished taxidermist that set it.

Valenti’s passion for hunting was commonly conducted in the companionship of Alex’s father, who cared little for the glory brought by a trophy. No, for Jesse Manes, hunting was about nothing less than establishing the dominance God gave to man over beast. His lessons were difficult to banish from one’s memory, so the trophies had to go. Somewhat to Alex’s surprise, Kyle—his physician, and Valenti’s firstborn and only son—had expressed distaste equal to his own about the trophies and refused to take a single one for himself when offered, even the most prized.

“My good man, whatever should a healing man want with a…a souvenir of death? It ill becomes the esteemed profession, yes?” Kyle had said, holding his handkerchief under his nose as he watched Alex wrestle a buck’s head off the wall.

“Had I not known better,” Alex grunted, “I would think the less lofty and more truthful answer is that the dead things rather turn your stomach, Valenti.”

“Oh, yes, alright then. There’s a _reason _my father kept a separate home for his business in the city, you know.”

These are the memories which fill Alex’s mind every time he grasps the tarnishing brass doorknob, every time he enters the narrow front hall. Sans its trophies, its garnishments, its bric-a-brac, the house feels no more Alex’s, merely an empty space, mere seconds from sale, home to a squatter rather than a guest. And yet Alex has made no effort. He lets Kyle fill the library with medical texts, with penny dreadfuls, with whatever he pleases, and contributes nothing of his own, despite the chest of novels and pamphlets moldering unopened at the foot of the bed in which he sleeps. He enlists the service of a single woman who does him the kindness of cooking his meals, and otherwise the hearth remains unlit, the rooms of the house stay empty, absent the voices of friends or family or anyone at work. He would allow—welcome, even—Kyle to move into his father’s house as well, but will not as yet extend the invitation or, rather, stoop to the level of begging his only remaining friend, a friend on retainer, nonetheless, to humor him every minute of the day.

Alex makes his way into the parlor and collapses upon the settee, the stairs being out of the question altogether in his current state. Misgivings about the motivations behind Kyle’s friendship aside, it would be smartest and most expedient to have sent the cab onward to his residence to fetch him forthwith, but exhaustion weighs upon Alex too heavily for him to care overmuch for intellect or expediency. With sluggish and shaking hands, he removes the apparatus of his leg and places it carefully on the floor. Even tired as he is, he puts himself and the remnant of that limb through the set of exercises Valenti so adamantly beat into his skull. It helps not at all with the aching, nor the abraded rawness of that skin—which Kyle is sure to have an apoplexy over—but the repetitive motion at least allows Alex some small measure of ritual and security that come part and parcel with being home at last—for a given definition of _home._

Forgoing supper and sleeping on this narrow, slightly musty couch are neither of them exciting prospects, but hardly anything Alex hasn’t done before. Yet another benefit of living alone. He has no one’s permission but his own to ask to not move from this spot for the next twenty-four hours.

In fact, several days go by before his return to fighting strength. True to form, Kyle does call upon him in the afternoon of the first day and is predictably horrified by what he finds; from his bag he pulls endless supplies and tools and tinctures, maintaining a fine head of steam all the while he cobbles together an unpleasantly astringent-smelling salve for the raw skin of Alex’s remainder limb; furthermore, he spends many long hours afterward brooding worse than a mother hen, clucking and fluttering about. Torn between aggravation at being Valenti’s coddled pet project and good humor at the behavior of a friend, Alex can nevertheless admit that his companionship makes the time pass much more agreeably than it would otherwise have passed.

Kyle posts himself up in one of the many shut-up bedrooms that once housed his father’s business associates and members of extended family who imposed themselves, and he refuses to leave until Alex, impatient, demands he accompany him on a turn ‘round the nearby park to prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that he is once more capable of his habitual solitary habitation, and does not require a live-in physician or any sort of minder whatsoever. If he must lean heavier on his cane than normal to accomplish this feat, it is a price more than willingly paid.

“I _do _trust you,” Kyle says as they once more mount the stoop, “Merely, I worry that you overtax yourself needlessly. Few men indeed of our class live as you do, injury or no! Whatever point you are trying to prove, you needn’t prove it to _me._”

“Is that so.”

“Manes, your moral character and fortitude of spirit and body have never been in doubt. I am your friend, and have the utmost admiration—”

“Oh, yes, alright.” Alex sighs and turns to face his companion at last. “I do appreciate—you are aware, I trust, that there is no way I could ever repay you for all you have done. I feel as if I owe you so great a debt that I shall never be free of its burden. Or else that _you _see your actions as payment of a debt incurred through your, ah, many youthful transgressions.”

Kyle frowns. “My friendship is not predicated on transaction.”

“Then,” Alex spreads his hands, “if that is true and we are to proceed as men and as equals, you must accept the many foibles and nuances of my lifestyle, and accept them wholeheartedly. Can you do that?”

“Oh, _very well._” Kyle sighs dramatically, but his smile swiftly returns, and he extends his hand to shake Alex’s heartily. “I will see you in a few days, then. Miss Evans is hosting another ball, and this time there will be no patients to keep me from attending. Ta for now—and _do _take care of yourself?”

“As always, Valenti.”

“That does _not _reassure me.” But Kyle is laughing as he bounds down the steps and towards the corner, and Alex smiles as he waves him off.

Soldiering leads one to the most peculiar of friendships, and oftentimes to the similarly strange dissolution of the same. Still, it is the strangest turn of events by far that Kyle Valenti should prove himself so staunch a companion. Still smiling, and with a disbelieving shake of his head, Alex lifts the latch and lets himself inside, placing his hat and coat on the rack and stretching out his shoulders.

In the distance, in the direction of the study, a light flickers, dancing and uncertain like firelight, and the smile slides from Alex’s face slick as oil. He clenches his fist around the head of his cane, and he wills his feet forward, but stays rooted to his spot.

Alex does not employ servants who would light the study fire in anticipation of his return to work, and no intruder would take the time to do so in the process of burgling his house. But Alex knows of one man whose study was never without the coiled promise of a fireplace fire, in the daytime, in the most temperate weather. For the past year of his convalescence, he has not seen nor heard nor spoken to that man, but he always should have known said reprieve was a temporary one. He takes a few steps down the hall. His false leg is too loud on the old floorboards.

“Do not linger in the hallway like a timid child,” his father says, “Get in here, boy. I have words for you.”

Alex takes a deep breath and shoulders the door open, and of their own volition, his muscles lock him to attention in the doorway.

Silhouetted against the fire, a glass of James Valenti’s expensive liquor in his hand, Jesse Manes looks his son from head to toe, and a muscle ticks in his jaw. “Was that the Valenti boy I heard you with? How deeply dependent have you become on that family’s charity while my eyes were turned away?” He sets his drink on the desk and levels Alex with an icy glare. “I _had_ thought you might come to me when you finally decided you valued your manhood, yet here you are. Hiding behind James’s skirts…may God rest his soul. You shame me—but more fool I, to expect war to have broken you of a lifetime’s habit.”

Alex need not absorb the blow each word is meant to land, for he is far too used to that sting for it to have much of an effect. He says, “This house was deeded to me in legal fashion as an inheritance. I do not presume to speculate as to why, but no speculation is required to say that had you cared or wished to care for my whereabouts this past year, it is information you could have easily obtained by a simple inquiry to my former superiors.”

“Your whereabouts are meaningless to me when you are conducting your life in a manner so anonymous so as not to bring shame upon me. Only God need know what you get up to _outside _the public eye. But now that you have reemerged, it seems I must needs once again intervene.”

“What in God’s name are you talking about?” Alex says impatiently. He shifts his weight. Despite his protestations to his physician, he is not so recovered that he relishes standing for such a length of time. But never would he suggest to his father that he wished to sit, for he is not in the habit of handing his enemies powder for their guns.

“It has come to my attention that you were quite the guest of honor at a soiree thrown by the Bracken widow this weekend past. Of all the clumsy attempts to become someone in this society, boy, entangling yourself with a woman of bad stock twice over is beneath even your admittedly _limited _purview.”

Ah. Of course. The prospect of marriage was ever one at the forefront of his father’s mind, more so than one might think logical for one’s fourth son; a prospect Alex deferred indefinitely by devoting himself to the solitary life of a soldier. Of course, Alex’s continued military service now made unachievable, his mind would fixate on the topic. Stiffly, Alex grinds out through his teeth, “Aspersions cast upon her parentage aside, Ms. Evans’s marriage was annulled before the man in question was pronounced dead. For someone who debases himself so thoroughly to be welcome in the drawing rooms of the elite, you seem woefully undereducated on the subject of proper address.”

Jesse’s eyebrows fly up to his forehead, an expression of such naked disdain on his face that Alex tightens his grip on his cane in preparation to defend himself.

“You presume to speak to me about _debasement?_” Jesse barks.

Despite the animal fear his father’s tone—the implication of the word—sends writhing in his stomach, Alex responds in even voice, “It is not I who dons the uniform on every eve at the end of every week so that those richer than Croesus will ooh and aah over a bravery in which I cannot maintain confidence without their patronage.”

“And despite your display of the much-lauded virtue of social exclusion, you went out of your way to attend a soiree thrown by a woman whose status as an item of gossip is outstripped only by the eligibility due her fortune.”

“I am not courting Isobel Evans, Father, and nor do I wish to be. My attendance at that household that night was driven merely by a desire for a greater volume of company than that I have enjoyed in my convalescence.”

“Disappointing. And here I thought you were at least attempting an _effort._”

There wells within Alex a helpless fury, a companion of his youth, which squeezes his ribs and renders him mute and consumes the rational workings of his mind. Jesse Manes forged himself an armor upon which the sharpest tongue will leave never so much as a scratch. He whetted his sword on the stony certainty of his own principle and wielded that weapon without hint of mercy nor discrimination. And Alex—was he not a fool for throwing himself, time and again, beneath the arc of that blade? Why even bother, when speed and efficiency dictate that he should hold his tongue, bow his head, and weather the storm until it blows itself to silence.

Each word landing with military precision, Father says, “I will expect you at home in the coming days to discuss several candidates whom I have identified for the sale of your commission.”

And with those parting words, and without hesitating for any sort of response, Alex’s father strides past him and into the hall, seeing himself out, and letting the door slam shut behind himself.

Alex, alone at last, closes his eyes and exhales on a long and measured breath. He leans his weight on the corner of the desk, and a part of himself, red and hot and young, wants to sweep his arm across the surface, fling books and papers and pens to the floor, shatter the glass Father left behind.

But what good would it do? He _is _a fool, and, perhaps, guilty of all the degeneracy of which he has been accused, and, certainly, lacking the penitence many, his father chief among them, would say was necessary for nothing so crucial as the very preservation of his soul. Yet how is he to care for the status of a soul left to wither upon its vine? What purpose is there in the harvest of a fruit so hard and bitter? Whatever guilt he bears, however abominable he appears in the eyes of those who wish for him nothing but evil things, there is no nourishment at their table, no sanctuary within their walls.

Jesse Manes is a man with a hoe and a sickle, and Alex’s survival has ever been contingent on roots grown under the fence and into the open field. So he makes common cause with working men and widows and women of the night. So he lives in a dead man’s house and stays alive by the grace of that man’s own son. There is but one true revolution, and it is the simplest revolt a man may fight—the revolution in every word and deed, not in anger nor in violence.

So, with a vigor borne of spite and spleen and all other ugly but so very viciously effective emotions, he eats well, drinks deep, dons his cane and cap and hails a cab for the second time in a week, headed for the river.


	4. acts of god

The air, fetid from the nearby river and heavy with the promise of rain, mimics Michael’s mood nicely. Head pounding from the previous night’s indulgences, he rushes to complete the day’s work and to get it under cover before the weather breaks, and this harsh pace results inevitably in brutal, stiff agony for his bad hand. He ought to just hang the day’s work and retreat to his apartment to drink himself back into a stupor, but alas there would be many long, unbearable minutes before he could sink into oblivion, minutes where he would have to remember _why _he was drinking and _work _at it.

So he buries himself in work while there is still whatever weak light makes it through the swollen gray clouds. The best thing that can be said is that it helps the time to pass, for even the finest work is little distraction from the aching in his chest, in his head. It is so hard to concentrate when every creak of wood in the wind sounds like Manes’s footstep on his stair. As he rudely massages his cramping hand for the fifth time in an afternoon, a voice in his head that sounds very much like his brother’s asks if he is truly seeking a distraction or merely seeking to punish himself for his own foolishness.

Thinking a word like love after only a single night’s passion. Michael spits into the dust and bends further over a finely carved rail special ordered and recently delivered from a master carpenter somewhere else in the city. The customer ordered this rail as well as several other pieces of trim without passing such information along to Sanders, and now Michael has the tedious task of staining several other wooden pieces to match. He almost wishes for the storm to come on more suddenly to ruin the thing entirely and save himself the trouble.

So it is true that Manes made his blood sing like no other lover ever had. So it is true that every part of him, from his stealthy gait to his clever words to his truly exceptional cock, runs incessantly through Michael’s mind as he searches and searches for the loose end to unravel the knot, to free himself. The man is handsome, and he is a mystery to you, he tells himself. Smarter maidens than Michael with more to lose besides have been taken in by less. This infatuation is patently absurd, and it will fade with time and with companionship which will be all the more pleasurable for its constancy.

Michael could find any number of lovers who could tell him to be silent and he would do so without a second thought, caring only for the moment of pleasure. He can carry on without the interference of Captain Alexander Manes in his life. This leaden weight within his bones, this unanchored swirling whirlpool in his mind, he has endured worse and will endure worse again, and he puts his head down low between his shoulders, curling them up to his ears, as he works against the wind and packs away his tools and hauls the parts into the shop.

His task is nearly complete when above the rushing wind the clatter of hooves and carriage wheels on the street grabs his attention. Teeth grit, he slams the shop door and bolts it. If this is some servant sent by some high-and-mighty lord to check on an order or, God forbid, place a new one, at this hour and in this weather, Michael is going to set Sanders’s dog on him.

Never mind the fact that the old mutt hasn’t bitten so much as a bone in the ten years Michael has known it.

Turning to face the street and the cab stopped there, Michael halts in place.

His hands are coated in wood stain, the brown color picking out every crevice of that cracked and calloused skin. He cradles his bad hand in the good, thumb digging into the knotted scar tissue between his third and fourth fingers as he stands there, gaping at the figure standing beneath the Sanders Carriage Co. sign that swings, creaking loudly in the wind, from the wooden arch at the front of the yard. Michael blinks rapidly, as if to clear dust from his eye, wishing away this cruel apparition, except—as he watches, Manes whips his hat off his head and holds it in front of him, thumb worrying at the brim as his other thumb rubs small circles on the silver head of his cane. He’s dressed far finer than he dressed for their previous assignation, but sloppily so, as if he fled from his home without a care. Unkemptness looks strange on him, as strange as the world must look to a fish, hooked through the mouth and suffocating on the floor of a boat. His shirt is half untucked, and Michael wishes to smooth his hand along the stark white fabric and return it to its place, both so he can touch this beautiful man once more and simply to set the world to rights and return the breath to his starving lungs.

As soon as the thought finishes, Michael is gripped with disgust. Is he so far gone on this man who has already once rejected him that he would, absent any loyalty or compensation, make himself his valet? Black his shoes for a penny and a pat on the head? Sew his buttons for the honor of curling up to sleep at his feet like a dog?

He fixes a scowl on his face as he sets his tools aside and approaches the man, to hide the unimpeachable truth that the answer could not possibly be anything but _yes, _an affirmation ringing clear as a bell within his chest, clear as a summons to the gallows.

“We need to talk,” Manes says as Michael approaches, and Michael barks out a laugh that sounds cracked and pathetic even to his own ears.

“Shall we? I believe I will remain silent, in accordance with your wishes.”

Manes straightens his shoulders, drawing himself up to his full posture. It is the kind of gesture a man might use to intimidate another; to start a fight. Michael knows this from alleys and barstools. He had not imagined there was much time for it on the battlefield but, he now supposes, a soldier fights a war on many fronts.

He wishes Manes did not feel the need to guard himself so. He is, abruptly, very tired.

Manes says, “Then I will speak, and you will listen.”

Before Michael can respond—for he _would _respond; for all his snappishness, he would not for the life of him deny an opportunity to trade words with Manes’s silver tongue—Manes barrels on, now gripping his hat brim tight enough to crush the fabric.

“I am aware that I have taken advantage of your courage and willingness to court ruin to be in my company. You put yourself at great personal and professional risk allowing me entrance to your home and place of work with the intentions we both held, and I rewarded such bravery with rejection and cowardice. It is my sincerest regret that I behaved thusly, and though such behavior is worthy of your scorn, I hope you will indulge my company a while longer, so we may push forward.”

It is hard to follow Manes’s words, when his mouth forms them so well and so finely, and when Michael can scarcely focus on anything other than the punishing fixture of those long fingers on satin, and his desire to put them to more peaceful and pleasurable office. Rain begins to fall in tiny, needling drops, but the sensation barely registers on Michael’s skin, distracted as he is from all other senses by the banquet Manes provides for his eyes.

“I come to you today with an explanation of my behavior. If I am making a selfish imposition, then let it be so only for this small amount of time as is required for me to speak—”

“Forward?” Michael interrupts, Manes’s words having at last worked their way into his mind. “What direction is that? We met once, at a party at my sister’s, of all places. Our safety could not have been more assured. Upon our second meeting, circumstances were quite different. We met purely to sate desires of the flesh; we were not sated. We went our separate ways, which was at your discretion. You were quite clear.”

Though not false, the words feel ugly and wrong in Michael’s mouth. To dismiss the connection felt between them as base lust pierces him as keenly as the voice he still hears in the back of his mind. _Let’s not talk. _That he could so easily voice this dismissal reinforces that which has driven Michael to the bottle and despair over the past nights—the certainty not so much that Manes was lost to him, but rather that Manes is correct to flee from him, that the confused, rabbiting need that has burrowed into his very being has no place in the life of one so established, one so above Michael’s own station, one who could only be served by leaving him behind. Perhaps he would have even survived the separation, if Manes did not stand before him now, speaking of forward motion.

Manes wrests back control of the conversation. “Forward: it is the direction of time, in the manner of boats at sea. Toward whatever heading we so desire.”

“Toward whatever heading we are commanded, in your Navy. Is it not so? Why do you speak of desire in the collective, when the last, most potent desire of _your _heart was my silence and an unlocked door?”

Manes smiles wryly, and it stokes the fires of Michael’s hurt anger ever higher. He was already an object of mockery, deservingly so for his juvenile, theatrical thoughts of love, but to further heap salt into his wounds is beneath the man he still thought Manes to be.

“I should have forgone the nautical metaphor,” Manes says, “For I was a cavalryman, and have never been to sea, and my own area of expertise serves all the better regardless. A horse can be a mercurial creature—strong, but easily startled into abusing that strength; tractable, except when certain of danger where none may exist. In such a manner, I treated you abominably when last we met. Your anger is well deserved.”

Michael has no rebuttal to that, and that very fact galls as much as anything else. Instead of parrying, he sidesteps and lets the blade go past. “Continue with your stated purpose,” he says. “There is work to be done before the weather breaks.”

It is a lie—he has sufficiently protected all that needs protecting from the rain, but he needs a rope to climb his way out of the well. The sky gives a warning rumble above them.

“I.” Manes begins, then cuts himself off, then starts again, “I feared to face you after our last parting, but I knew I must. The connection we shared—”

His next words are cut off by a curtain of rain falling around them, silver and roaring, and punishingly cold. It takes a physical push to bring him closer to Manes, against the elements and against the skittishness of his own heart which fears that if he approaches, Manes will vanish. Yet when he finds him behind the curtain, he is there, solid and real, blinking water out of his eyes.

“Your leg,” Michael says, having nearly to shout.

“What of it?” Manes shouts back.

Rather than attempting to yell a response over the driving rain, Michael takes Alex’s arm and half-drags him to shelter under the stairs that lead to his apartment. It’s a poor shelter, with water pouring between the wood slats, but it is better than nothing.

Alex folds his arms for warmth, fists jammed into his underarms, his hat abandoned to ruin at last, though the agony he’d inflicted on the brim had already quite disturbed it. He shoots Michael a questioning look, and Michael gestures behind him in the vague direction of the workshop.

“I am something of a mechanist; I recognize delicate machinery when it is before me. You cannot be out in this weather.”

“Forgive me this blasted poor timing. Mr. Guerin, truly, I wish to speak with you, I wish us to speak until we reach a conclusion, not to be interrupted by an act of God.”

“Well, we cannot do so in the yard any longer; your God has seen to that. But yes, let us have out. Come upstairs where you can be dry. Stay until morning, even, if such a thing is possible. If I must be a distasteful memory, I shan’t be one that costs you in dignity, pocket, _and _flesh.”

It is easy like opium to lob words like balls of mud in the street and watch them splash on Alex’s well-heeled boot, watch the subtle twitch of muscle in his carefully-schooled soldier’s face. If he cannot move that jaw with a touch, he will do so with fury instead, and bask in the fire of his attention.

“I accept your invitation to continue this conversation indoors,” Alex says tensely, “Though I must protest that I do not need your patronization and have in fact put this mechanism through its paces in many conditions and found it most agreeable.”

Michael inclines his head. “Apologies.”

“You needn’t make excuses to any degree of pigheadedness to get me out of the rain,” Alex replies, and breezes past, leaving Michael to follow him somewhat helplessly up the stairs and into his own apartment.

Just inside, Manes’s eyes dart from place to place as he takes in the small, cluttered space. Michael considers shaking his sodden curls like a dog, just because no _respectable _man would. He restrains himself from that one childish impulse, but still he shoulders past Alex and drapes himself across the head of his bed, fully aware there are no other uncluttered places for Alex to sit, requiring that he perch himself beside Michael on the bed.

Before Alex can say a thing, Michael snorts and says, “Fear not for your virtue. I will sleep in the workshop loft; it would hardly be the first time.”

Alex lowers himself to the end of the bed and places his cane beside him. “Does the roof not leak?”

“It does, but what does it matter? I spend a damp night; you spend one uncomfortable. But at the least you will be able to leave in the morning, and that is all that matters.”

“I won’t have you put yourself out for me. You could catch cold—I won’t have you come to harm for something so trivial—"

“Save your care,” Michael snaps, patience grown thin. “You suggest that the explanation you offer is a selfish imposition; I make no value judgment, but I say in no uncertain terms that I do not want it; I do not require it. I want only the same that I wanted when first I saw you, which is to know you utterly. You cannot ask me to be less. I do not know that I can provide it, and that is fair to neither of us. You speak of going forward, but to me that means one thing, and once more, I cannot ask you to feel the same.”

“I ask nothing! I expect nothing. I have already stated what I want and why I came here, which is to find a way for us to go on _together. _Would you please _listen?” _

Michael takes a deep breath and exhales slowly. His chest feels heavy, and he does not know if his ribs will creak beneath the weight. There should not be enough illumination in the indoor gloom to spark lights in Alex’s dark, dark eyes, but it is so, and they glitter like lamplight reflected in still water as their eyes lock together.

_Manes, _he thinks, defensive. When did he falter in his resolution to keep them separate in his mind? _Alex _is too much, too soft, sweet in his mouth like honeycomb, sealing his lips and teeth with wax; yet _Alexander _belongs to another man entirely, one Michael has not even met and one he fears to meet at all, for fear he will fall again. _Captain _hums inside his throat, flickers at the corners of his eyes like candlelight. He cannot use it, for it is such a powerful reminder of that first night, when anything seemed possible.

So, like a coward hiding from the front lines, he sets _Alex _aside and thinks _Manes. _

For a moment, until he looks once more upon those midnight eyes, and he is _Alex _once again, stuffing Michael’s mouth with sweets and cotton.

Does Alex mean it? Could he possibly? What is Michael to do if Alex leaves him a second time, or a third? Any hundred of things could keep even the most ardent and well-meaning of lovers apart. This—Michael would be a fool to set himself up once more to be knocked to the dirt in pieces.

“Tell me, then, so I may know if we are aligned. What direction do you wish to take and why has your heart so changed, in so short a time?”

The words fly from Michael’s lips sans his permission. But in the moment that follows, Alex reaches out slowly, as if to a cowering animal, and touches the end of one golden curl with the tip of his finger, more intent than contact, sensation more imagined than physical, yet Michael feels almost a need to be moved by the touch, knocked askance from his allotted place in the ordered universe.

"You wear it so long," he says, and Michael searches for something, any clue, within his voice, but there is nothing, neither wistfulness nor recrimination. 

"I do," he says, and tilts his head askew. Alex has his permission to do more, always. To slide his strong and clever fingers through Michael's hair to the root, to pull it until Michael's eyes water. But he, as is his wont, declines that invitation, and his hand falls away, back down to his side.

"It's out of fashion."

"I suppose that's true."

"But you don't think of cutting it? Queueing it?"

"No. I cut it whenever it gets in my way, but otherwise keep it as I please. What use have I for fashion?"

"Acceptance. Anonymity. Safety within a crowd. What use have you for a rebellion so small and meaningless? A pragmatic mind would simply adopt a less conspicuous style and have done."

"Meaningless to whom? If something this simple can be seen as a rebellion, it must have meaning. I mean to save precious minutes on personal grooming. I mean to enjoy the feeling of a lover's hands twisting and stroking and pulling. Small victories, perhaps, but mine. What use have I for the esteem of those who would only find something else about me to criticize?"

Alex’s eyes drift from Michael’s eyes down to his mouth, then slowly back up again, as if he is searching for some holy truth in the planes of Michael’s face. Searching for more things himself to criticize, perhaps, and if so there is more than enough to whet his appetite. He has not mended his trousers in months; his floor is dusty and unswept. Books liberated from the Evans’s library (scientific texts, primarily, for Max would miss the literature or the philosophy) totter in increasingly precarious piles heaped with coats or trinkets. The most expensive thing in his possession is not even truly his—a jeweled and feathered hat left behind by a former lover, one of Isobel’s friends, the last time he saw her, which Michael only kept because the monstrosity of the thing amused him. His shirtsleeves are wearing so thin at the elbows and shoulders the tan of his skin darkens the white fabric. He is shabby, disorganized, a tradesman and a lapsed street urchin.

And yet Alex rubs his fingers together at his side, a small and constant motion like there is some texture he misses between them.

He says, “You ask me why my heart has changed. The answer is that it has not. Still, I tell myself that to live a life of solitude would be an easier one, and freer of pain. Yet it is painful even more so to imagine you leading that life, anathema to the brilliance I see in your courage. In short: I want you, and you terrify me.”

“Why should wanting me inspire terror? Despite appearances, I am capable of discretion, and would endeavor always to avoid your ruin and mine. I have known how deep a blow society can strike against true subversion.” He plays the stiff and ragged fingers of his injured hand.

Alex sighs, in the characteristic way he has, no lift, all exhale, no visible tension, all measured release. Michael watched him breathe just like this so many times in that candlelit ballroom. Their attraction from that night was a sprint, a horse touched with a whip and beating on toward the finish line and glory. Only a disaster of lethal dimensions could have put a stop to it. Meeting in the daylight is a more delicate thing.

“Someday I must hear your story, and you will have mine from me.” Alex drums his fingers on his knee.

Michael does not want to think on it. It has been hard enough to steel himself to think the name Manes; he has only discovered the capacity to do so now that the derelict has been salvaged and replaced, board by board, by a man with that name who is possessing of strong, warm hands and fire in his smile and an enigmatic countenance. He wants nothing of the father’s fish-eyed gaze between them, for all that Alex…perhaps…deserves to know the truth.

“Another time.” Far, far in the future. “Please, continue the story already at hand. I will attempt to stem the flow of interjections.”

“I confess—all the journey here, I prepared myself to face you and prepared what I would say, but you have a way of turning all plans on their heads.” Alex’s eyes shift from the floor, to Michael’s, to somewhere over Michael’s shoulder. He gives another one of those sighs, straightens his spine, and says, “I have been a soldier for many years; it is the only life I know. And being a soldier comes with many restrictions, but certain freedoms as well. Fellow men turn their eyes away from things they would not otherwise countenance. There is a certain understanding.”

Michael nods. It’s not a life he could ever lead—he would be certainly be tried for insubordination within a fortnight—but there is a recognizable appeal to such a life, even if it results in something tragic and short.

Alex continues, “It isn’t war that taught me fear. It is my father who holds that particular honor. For as long as I can remember, he has been a specter upon my back, a foul presence from which I can neither run nor hide. Even the face of certain death could not frighten me more, nor dislodge his shadow from my soul and could not release the chains he forged that bind me. That is why you terrify me. The thought of retribution from that man—what he could do to either of us—”

His voice contains such bleakness that Michael cannot sit still. Heedless of the danger of rejection, he reaches out to touch, to comfort, to link them together. Alex turns his hand palm up at the last moment, so their palms slide together in a rough caress, rather than Michael closing his hand around that fine-boned wrist. This touch is by fair the better. The sensation of Alex’s fingers in the space between his fingers raises gooseflesh all up and down Michael’s arm.

“It was a mistake to come to you in daylight.” Alex’s eyes cease flitting about the room and land on their joined hands as a fixed point. “Had I come in darkness, perhaps he would have been less at the front of my mind, and less between us, and I could have stayed rather than shatter us into a thousand pieces.”

Michael shakes his head so vigorously a stray curl strikes his cheekbone. “Seeing you in the light was—” he clears his throat and curls the first finger of his hand, sliding the tip of it across the delicate skin between Alex’s fingers. “—It was.” All his words have vanished; an embarrassed flush buries him in its heat. He clears his throat again and ducks his head, peering at Alex’s profile from beneath his hair. The corner of Alex’s mouth twitches into a shaky smile, and it’s the greatest rush of triumph Michael’s experienced in his life, the certainty that he could devour the world swelling within his chest.

“Well,” Alex says, clearing his own throat, clenching his hand around Michael’s fingers. “Well.”

Michael breaks the thickened tension first with a snort of laughter, and then Alex laughs along with him, giving Michael courage enough to shift ever closer and to knock their shoulders together.

“It wouldn’t have done,” Michael says eventually, growing serious once more, “continuing on in desperation, in the dark, battling fear in every moment. We would have had some good times, but if there are things to be exhumed, hold your nose and get to work, I say.”

“It isn’t that simple. I—I may come to you with a hundred confessions as empty as this one, lay them at your feet, and still I may shrink from you. You will tire of me. I will put you in grave danger, for my father would not hesitate even now to take steps to preserve the family honor and position.”

“All, indeed, are possible paths the future could hold. I happen to be in the acquaintance of a reputable psychic as well as a reliable bookmaker, if you wish to make a wager on the most likely of them.”

“Cad.”

“Dead to rights.”

Alex runs his thumb along the ridge of tendon on the underside of Michael’s wrist, and Michael sighs.

“All I can say is this,” Alex says. “I came to you today—ill-conceived, which is far from my usual manner of doing business—because an altercation with the man called my father reminded me that I cannot live my life according to his wishes without damning myself to a hollow and bleak existence. He may have forged strong chains to bind me, but I have prided myself on always searching every inch I am given for something with which to pick the lock. He takes his victories, but I will not cede more ground than I must. I know it is too much to ask of you. But I wish to fight—myself, my own demons—for a chance that we may find happiness together.”

“Oh, hell.” What use is guarding himself against a broken heart in the face of words like that? Perhaps he is casting himself in a particularly tragic play—certainly, he has already met the villain of the piece, and has no desire to do so again. But hell, oh hell, there’s a quaver in Alex’s voice on the word _happiness, _and it resonates in Michael like a struck gong, and he could no more turn from that call than sprout wings and touch the stars.

“Oh, hell,” Michael repeats. “You have me. You must know you do. You have me entirely.”

“If that is true, then I must instruct you.” Alex slides his hand from Michael’s up to the crook of his arm, where he holds him firm, the heat from his hand soaking through Michael’s thin shirt. “Do not bed down in the workshop tonight. Stay here, with me.”

“I can do that.”

It is with shy, boyish smiles that they settle in for the rainy night. They set their coats aside in favor of quilts from Michael’s bed to ward off the chill let in by the drafty old walls. Michael produces a pack of cards and proposes they play for stories; it is Alex who proposes they play for kisses instead, and that is how they pass the night, until the inevitable rise of the sun.


End file.
